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What If?

July 6, 2019September 22, 2022 Nik

What if I slept too long? What if I forget my keys? What if I won’t get everything done today? What if I run out of time?

What if my investments are down? What if I suddenly need money? What if I picked all the wrong stocks? What if my bank freezes my assets? What if I can’t make rent? What if no one will lend me any money?

What if I can’t think of anything good today? What if I have a creative block? What if I’m slow or sick? What if I fail to meet the deadline? What if I disappoint my boss? What if the report sucks? What if we run out of funding? What if our project tanks?

What if my date cancels at the last second? What if I do the same to my friend? What if she’ll never talk to me again? What if my son becomes a slacker at school? What if my daughter is bullied? What if I’m a bad parent?

What if I skip the gym today? What if I miss the last practice before the game? What if I tear a ligament? What if I can never play again? What if the coach keeps me on the bench all season? What if I lose my favorite hobby?

What if, what if, what if. But what if I don’t?

What if I ignore the clock in the morning? What if I don’t rush to get ready? What if I brush my teeth carefully? What if I don’t break a sweat right after I shower?

What if I don’t let the traffic get to me? What if I have compassion for my fellow commuters? What if they’re just having a bad day? What if they’re plagued by “what if?”

What if I said “hi” to everyone at the office? What if I asked them how they really felt? What if my boss is more scared of failing than I am? What if we won’t?

What if I leave my phone at the office when I go to lunch? What if I don’t miss anything? What if I order her favorite dish for both of us? What if we hit it off? What if I listen? What if she tells me something amazing?

What if I never make more money than now? What if that’s all I need? What if I never retire? What if I don’t want to? What if I find something that’s too much fun to quit? What if people are happy with what I’m doing now?

What if my hobbies are just hobbies? What if I take off the pressure? What if some things are meant to stay small? What if I allowed this to fail? What if it turns into a good story?

What if I call my oldest friend? What if he picks up the phone? What if I took out that old album? What if I spent the afternoon looking at pictures? What if that’s all I need to not feel alone?

What if, what if, what if. But what if I don’t?

What if I don’t think about any of these things? What if I’m not in the wrong time, not the wrong place? What if humans aren’t meant to be? What if we can travel through time, but shouldn’t?

What if I took a deep breath? What if I embraced the moment? What if all that exists is right in front of me? What if ‘alive’ is just a synonym of ‘now?’

What if I’m everything I need to be? What if nothing’s missing?

What if life doesn’t care about what-ifs? What if I stopped asking?

What if?

Why Too Much Freedom Makes Us Unhappy

June 11, 2019September 22, 2022 Nik

Back in the 90s, there were about 7,000 items in your average supermarket. That’s already a lot of stuff to choose from, but today, that number is as high as 50,000. That’s 50,000 choices, 50,000 yeses or nos — from one trip to the grocery store.

Given there are many more important things than doing our daily shopping, and almost each of them comes with a similarly outsized wealth of options, who wouldn’t feel stressed?

A nifty little concept to capture this anxiety we feel when we have too much freedom is FOMO — fear of missing out.

Can’t decide which stocks to buy? FOMO.
Wait till the last minute to pick the best event to go to? FOMO.
Have a hard time committing to a relationship? FOMO.

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains how too much choice leads to four conditions that reduce our happiness. And they’re all rooted in FOMO.

1. Analysis Paralysis

It’s easier to pick one out of two meals than one out of 50. With more options, we spend more time analyzing and tend to get stuck. Often, we’ll choose to do nothing at all for a long time, and dragging your heels never feels good.

2. Anticipated Regret

If there are millions of options, you should be able to find the perfect one, right? Wrong. Perfect almost never exists. But with so much choice, we think it has to, and therefore face immense pressure to get each choice right.

3. Postdecision Regret

This imagined perfect choice sticks with you long after you’ve decided. So no matter what you pick, if you had too many options at the time you made your call, you’ll be more likely to regret the choice later — and think it’s your fault.

4. Escalated Expectations

The more choice we have, the higher our expectations become. Objectively, we might be able to pick a pair of better-fitting jeans out of a selection of ten rather than just three. But subjectively, we can still feel worse, because our expectations have risen even more in comparison. With ten pairs available, better isn’t enough anymore. Again, they would have to be perfect.

Since it creates these four conditions and thus puts a lot of psychological pressure on us, FOMO is at the heart of modern-day unhappiness. With FOMO, even the tiniest, most irrelevant choice can balloon into a full-blown existential crisis. But instead of constantly solving these, we should fix the root cause. We should start fighting FOMO.

The first step of doing so is recognizing it as it happens. When you find yourself hesitating or taking unusually long to make a choice, sit with the discomfort for a second. Probe it with questions. Why is this so hard? What is stopping me from moving forward here? Is this an important issue? Or could I flip a coin and wouldn’t care much about the outcome?

The more you do this, the more “important” decisions you’ll expose as actually near-meaningless. And with each one you unmask, an idea becomes clearer and a new belief begins to form: FOMO makes absolutely no sense.

Not all of us remember simpler times pre-smartphones, pre-internet, even pre-computers. But, whether you’re lucky enough to do so or not, remember: we used to make do with what we had in almost all areas of life.

When I was a kid, I had to call my friend’s house to arrange a playdate. We set a time and then we showed up. And when we went home, we had to stop talking. We might not see each other again for a week. And everything, all of that, was perfectly okay. Today, the sheer image of all the uncertainty in this might feel depressing. Will he pick up the phone? Will she have time? What was he doing all of last week?

Back then, there was no internet to stay connected 24-7. But there was also no issue of who and what to stay connected with 24-7. There were also only ten pairs of shoes at the store, only three cars in your price range at the local dealer, and only two girls you liked in your local peer group. None of it meant the end of the world. In fact, as we now know, it made us happier.

So no. We don’t need to obsess over every detail of our lives. We don’t need to get every pizza topping right. Forget FOMO. Don’t let freedom hijack your brain. Don’t let it fool you into false importance. In the grand scheme of things, we’re still small. And in this smallness is where happiness lies.

Find JOMO. The joy of missing out. In a world that’s too full, letting go is reason to celebrate not cringe. Whenever you’re limited, be glad you have fewer options. Say thank you, pick something, and move on. And when you’re faced with a big selection, define some criteria. Find what meets your standards, and then don’t look back.

50,000 items at the supermarket. The world has become a big place. But that’s no reason to allow it to turn you into a nervous wreck. You can engage with all this choice, but you can also decide not to. You can shrink your option-circle. Make one choice to eliminate 1,000. Be small on purpose. And not buy into “more is always better.”

No matter how many items they stock, you can set your own boundaries. You’re in control. Use it. Exercise it. Discipline is happiness. Not just at the grocery store, but it sure is a great place to start.

How You See Yourself Will Determine How the World Sees You

June 7, 2019September 25, 2023 Nik

I have been following Casey Neistat for almost ten years. He’s one of my favorite humans.

What few people know is that even before he started on Youtube, he was already a successful filmmaker. He and his brother sold a show to HBO for $2 million the year he opened his channel. He’d been nominated for a Daytime Emmy and had received lots of praise for his short films — films like iPod’s Dirty Secret, which pushed Apple, yes, Apple, into offering a battery replacement program and extended warranties for iPod’s that showed poor battery life.

If you’ve been following him long enough, none of this will come as a surprise. Because if one thing becomes evident from observing Casey, it’s that he’s a hustler. Always has been, always will be. He sets goals, works hard, achieves them, and then sets bigger goals. That’s who he is. He talks about it often.

Given his hardcore work ethic, soon, some of his first Youtube videos went viral. There was his analysis of Chatroulette, the one about $2 bills, and, of course, Make It Count for Nike, which reached three million views in its first week alone — in 2012.

Until 2015, Casey continued making hits like these on the regular. However, after five years and about 100 such videos, Casey had “just” 500,000 subscribers. That’s a lot, but considering how much Youtube itself grew in that time, Casey’s one hundred million views, and that even his Twitter following was half as large, that’s not what you’d expect.

Don’t Forget to Breathe

June 3, 2019September 22, 2022 Nik

You open your eyes and there it is. A spark. You can feel it. It’s tiny. But it’s enough. The beauty of new beginnings. You’re excited. You start. You roll. You make progress. You fuel the spark and the spark fuels you.

You’re motivated. You can’t sleep. You want to wake up and just go, go, go. You’re better. At work, at home, at the gym. It spreads. It’s contagious. You have energy. So. Much. Energy. Where does it come from?

Either way, it’s there. It needs go somewhere. You need more. Something else. Anything else. Another project. A new sport. A better job. Go, go, go!

But then, somewhere, something shifts. Where is it? Where is the spark? You wake up and…what? Why? How can this be? I don’t want to get up. No. Nooo. Just let me sleep. Come on. Just one extra hour.

But now, you can’t. Now, you have to get up. You have work to do. The gym is important. Your second project is slow. And a part of the first just broke. It needs fixing. Ugh. It’s too much. When are you supposed to do all of this?

A friend calls. She’s in town. Let’s get dinner? Another needs help. Hey, can you read my resumé? Slowly, anxiety creeps in. Everything is just another item on your to-do list. The list is long. Endless. It just spools off in your head. Over and over. Why does it never stop?

You can’t sleep. Your heart is pounding. You’ve had way too much coffee. You try anyway. Eight hours. Just this once. Pleaaase. You wake up after five. Argh. No time, no time. Gotta go. Gotta fix all of this.

Stop.

What happened? How did you go from “I can take on the world” to “I’m overwhelmed, alone, and no one understands me?” How did it fly by so fast?

Nothing. Nothing really happened.

You just forgot to slow down. You forgot to breathe.

Breathing. You’re doing it right now. But taking a breath? Please, do it right now. More breathing, more living. Deeper breathing, deeper living.

How thin our most important survival mechanism becomes. Often, we don’t even notice. We just sit there, looking at our screens. But a cascade of shallow gasps? Just enough air to keep functioning, yet not enough to properly process anything? That’s not breathing. And that’s not living.

But if anxiety takes over, that’s our next stop. And we always get there fast. Let’s hit the brakes. Let’s pause for a second.

In fact, let’s pause for several. Science makes a compelling case to do so. In The Willpower Instinct, psychologist Kelly McGonigal provides an alternative to our body’s ancient fight-or-flight response. She calls it pause-and-plan:

“The pause-and-plan response puts your body into a calmer state, but not too sedate. The goal is not to paralyze you in the face of internal conflict, but to give you freedom. By keeping you from immediately following your impulses, the pause-and-plan response gives you the time for more flexible, thoughtful action.”

But what does that response look like? How do you trigger it? Yup. You guessed it: Breathing.

“The pause-and-plan response drives you in the opposite direction of the fight-or-flight response. Instead of speeding up, your heart slows down, and your blood pressure stays normal. Instead of hyperventilating like a madman, you take a deep breath. Instead of tensing muscles to prime them for action, your body relaxes a little.”

A well-trained athlete has primed their body to exhibit this response. Faced with a challenge, an opponent, a hurdle, their default is to relax, then tackle the guy, jump off the board, or hit back the ball. The same goes for an expert or any seasoned mindfulness practitioner.

But even an amateur can learn. Practice the physical response, and the mind will follow. Breathing is our most fundamental pattern as human beings. It is also our first chance to disrupt a pattern, to escape anxiety’s grasp, to start with a clean slate and make a change.

Life is a cycle. It all comes and goes. Our state of busy, of energy, of motivation and anxiety. But at any point in this cycle, you can breathe.

More breathing, more living. Deeper breathing, deeper living.

Every problem has a solution. It’s never the same, but it always lies behind a single, deep breath.

Sometimes, it’s taking action. Sometimes, it’s acceptance. Sometimes, it’s thinking or waiting or courage or patience. But it’s always a solution we must take time to even see. A solution that needs room, that requires us to breathe.

Perseverance. That’s what it is. Perseverance, one cycle at a time.

Breathe.

What’s the Point of Art?

May 18, 2019August 31, 2022 Nik

In 2001, contemporary artist Damien Hirst went to the opening of his new exhibition in London. Standing in the rubble of the afterparty, he felt inspired — and turned it into an impromptu art installation.

The next morning, the janitor was the first person in the building. Sadly, he didn’t share Hirst’s sense of imagination — and chucked his assortment of ashtrays, coffee cups, and beer bottles right into the trash. Oops.

Hirst thought it was hilarious. The gallery owner probably didn’t. On the surface, this is just an ironic, funny incident. But if we analyze it, it reveals something much deeper: Damien Hirst truly understands art.

In Germany, we have a saying. We use it when someone’s clinging to an item out of nostalgia, mostly in a good-spirited, but also a slightly mocking way:

“Is this art or can this go?”

It’s a joke, but it’s also meant to help you move on. Not from the nostalgia or the good memories, but from the item. It’s your art exhibition, but we’re the janitor. And we’re here to clean up the building.

I don’t “get” Damien Hirst. I don’t get the animals or the dots or the skulls. And I definitely don’t get the sculptures of giant uteruses. But then again, to this day, I struggle with most contemporary art.

I keep catching myself, asking: What’s the point? And I think that’s the exact right question to ask. But because I keep looking for subjective signs of effort and quality, I’m missing it. Have missed it.

Because now, it’s starting to dawn on me that, maybe, art is not about what you can spot. What you can directly see. Maybe, it’s about what you can feel.

And there’s no rulebook for who feels what with which kind of art.

On April 20, 2018, we lost famous DJ Avicii. Exactly one year later, two cellists released a video. They played his biggest hit to 50,000 people. When I watch that video, I can feel it. And I can see all the people in it feeling it too.

But when you watch it, you may not. That’s fine. In fact, that’s the point.

We all have different feelings at different times. But we feel in different ways too. And that’s why we need different art. Why we need a whole lot of it. Because as different as we are, we all want to feel something.

That something is connectedness. And that’s what art can give us.

Art can take on infinite forms. It could be a nod in the street, a silent wave to the stranger at the bar. Maybe, it’s an email to stressed parents or a coding tutorial on a napkin. And yes, sometimes it’s oil on canvas or a symphony.

But as soon as it connects two people, if for the briefest of moments, it works.

Once it’s done that, it can go. Even if it’s “art.” Because we’ll remember the connection. We can summon it with our senses. As long as we do that, we’re never truly alone. We might be lonely or misunderstood or lack intimacy, but we’ll always be human. Still one of many who are one.

Art is just the reminder. That’s what Damien Hirst knows. And that’s why the janitor can throw away his art.

Sometimes, we can find this reminder in a tribute. Sometimes, we can find it in the trash. But we can always find it in a memory.

The composition may long be swept away, but the connection forever stays. It was never about the installation. It was about us.

And that’s the point of art.

The Four Burners Theory of Work-Life Balance

May 1, 2019September 25, 2023 Nik

Imagine there’s an old stove in your house. It’s square and has four burners.

You know, the kind where you still have to light the gas with a match and pull your hand away really fast so you don’t get burned. Each of those burners represents an important area of your life:

Family.
Friends.
Health.
Work.

So far, so good. There’s only one problem. According to the original New Yorker article first mentioning the concept:

“In order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.”

Ouch. That hurts. But it makes perfect sense. It stings because it’s true.

How To See The World As It Is

April 15, 2019October 2, 2022 Nik

It’s a sunny day. You’re driving. The view is clear and the road stretches for miles ahead. You hit cruise control, lean back, and enjoy the ride.

Suddenly, a few clouds pull up. The first raindrops begin to fall. “No biggie,” you think. You can still see and maneuver.

After a while, however, the storm really hits. The sky is all but grey, you can feel the wind inside the car, and your wipers don’t seem to do anything. Your windshield is so full of water, it might as well be frosted glass.

Now, you’re barely holding on, trying to steer, but really, you can’t see anything. You’re just hoping for the best.

That’s what life is like when you’re unaware of your biases. You can’t think straight or make good decisions, because you don’t see the world as it actually is. Without realizing it, you’re pushed around by invisible forces.

The way to start combatting these forces is to learn about them. Here are ten of the most important ones.

The Backfire Effect

You’ve probably heard of confirmation bias, which has us looking for information that confirms our views, instead of challenging them. The backfire effect is its big brother: If you see a correction after remembering something false, you’ll trust the false fact even more. For example, if the sexual harassment allegations against a celebrity are found to be untrue, you might now trust them even less, as you’re not sure what to believe anymore.

The Ambiguity Effect

If we don’t have enough information to guess the probability of something, we’ll avoid that option altogether. We’d rather buy lottery tickets than stocks, because one is simple, the other needs learning. This effect means we might not even try to go for our goals, only because we can better estimate the odds of more realistic options, like getting promoted vs succeeding as a freelancer.

Survivorship Bias

Tom has a successful blog. Tom writes like this. I want a successful blog. I’ll write like Tom. This rarely works. Tom just happened to survive long enough to succeed, regardless of his writing style. Maybe, many others wrote like him too, but didn’t make it. Therefore, copying Tom is no guarantee of success.

Zero-Risk Bias

Zero-risk bias makes us exert too much energy and money towards the wrong ends rather than focusing on important, more impactful factors. It occurs because we’d rather eliminate however little risk is left than reduce the overall amount by a big chunk. Instead of buying a second insurance policy for a different threat, we’ll get the full package for our car and pay a premium.

Probability Neglect

We completely ignore how likely it is we might fall down the stairs, but if any plane were to crash, it must be ours. Similarly, we’d rather gamble to win a billion than a million, even if the odds are much lower. That’s because we respond to the magnitude of events, not their probabilities. Probability neglect explains most of our misplaced fear and optimism.

The Bandwagon Effect

When you choose between two restaurants, you might go with the more crowded one. But if everyone before you did the same, the first guests inevitably chose at random between two empty ones. Often, we do things just because other people do them. This not just twists our ability to accurately assess information, especially on the web, but also ruins our happiness.

The Spotlight Effect

Because we live in our own heads 24/7, we think everyone else devotes nearly as much attention to our lives as we do. Of course, no one does, because they also suffer from this imaginary spotlight. People won’t notice your pimple or messy hair as they’re busy worrying you’ll notice their pimple or messy hair.

Loss Aversion

If I give you a mug today and tell you it’s worth $5, you won’t sell me back that same mug for $5 tomorrow. According to Daniel Kahneman, you’ll want as much as $10. Just because it’s yours now. But us owning things does not make them more valuable. Thinking it does is a problem because it also means we’re more afraid of losing whatever we have than not getting what we really want.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Do you leave the theater when the movie is bad? Because throwing your good time after dollars spent badly won’t help. We often stick to an irrational path of action solely to be consistent with our previous choices. But once the ship is sinking, it’s time to abandon ship, regardless of what caused the dilemma. The sunk cost fallacy keep us wasting time, money, and energy on things that are long past the point where they ever had a chance of working out.

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality

You may know that Parkison said “work expands to fill the time available for it,” but, related to that, there’s also his law of triviality. It says that we spend disproportionate amounts of time on trivial issues to avoid the cognitive discomfort of solving complex, important problems. When you start a blog, all you need to do is write. But designing the logo feels really important, right?

Wikipedia lists almost 200 cognitive biases. It’s impossible to fight them all, all the time. But it helps to develop awareness.

The first part of this awareness comes from being able to recognize a bias when it plays a trick on your or someone else’s mind. That’s why we need to know what they are and look out for them.

The second part is learning to notice them in real-time. This ability only forms with consistent practice. The best way to do this — and therefore our single-greatest weapon against deceitful perceptions — is to take a deep breath before all important decisions.

Whenever you’re about to take a big next steps, breathe. Pause. Give yourself a few seconds to reflect. What’s going on here? Am I biased? Why do I want to do this the way I want to do it?

Every cognitive bias is a small raindrop on your windshield. A few of them won’t hurt, but if they fill every inch, you might as well drive in the dark. If you have a general understanding of what they are and how they function, a short pause is often enough to find the awareness you need to think clearly.

So slow down. Drive safely. And turn on the wipers before it’s too late.

Why Rest Is Essential To High Performance

April 9, 2019August 10, 2023 Nik

On The Tim Ferriss Show, LeBron James said he sleeps eight or nine hours each night. Sometimes ten. And if he can’t get those, he’ll catch up with a two-hour nap. James is a prominent fan of quality shut-eye, but not the only one.

According to ESPN, sprinter Usain Bolt and tennis stars Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova also shoot for an average sleeping time close to the double-digits. Point guard legend Steve Nash told The New York Times that naps on game day are a common occurrence among NBA players — and they help.

The message is that sleep isn’t just beneficial, but essential to top performance.

This is easy enough to understand for physically demanding activities, like sports, but when it comes to knowledge work and creative professions, we have a much harder time accepting the importance of sleep.

And yet, all of us know how tough it can be to host a long meeting or how hungry we are after hours of creativity. So what’s going on here?

Everything We Do Is Not For Today

March 25, 2019August 10, 2023 Nik

When the town’s crime boss wants a precious piece of land, he sends some of his goons to terrorize the school that’s built on it. First, they threaten the principal, then they torch a classroom.

Luckily, the local Kung Fu master saves the day. When he tries to acquire more help in form of the police, however, the chief says his hands are tied. His boss took the case. Corruption. After listening patiently, the master starts talking:

“The world’s not fair. But moral standards should apply to all. Those who rule aren’t superior and those who are ruled aren’t inferior. This world doesn’t belong to the rich. Or even the powerful. It belongs to those with pure hearts.
Have you thought about the children? Everything we do, they’re watching. And everything we don’t do. We need to be good role models.”

And then, master Ip Man says something important. Something we forget. Something that, little by little, seems to fade from the human story:

“Everything we do is not for today — but for tomorrow.”

Stop Optimizing Dumb Shit

February 28, 2019September 17, 2023 Nik

I have a friend. She’s brilliant at arts and crafts. Every time I enter her place, she’s tinkering. Decorating. Customizing a birthday gift. Preparing a surprise package. And it all looks amazing. Bar none.

But when she tells me the story of how her current project came together, I always die a little bit inside.

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